Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  (Galatians 5:19-21)

The ESV renders verse 21b like this:  “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

When did Paul “warn” the Galatians “before” about the works of the flesh?  When, before writing them the letter that we know as the book of Galatians, had he told them about these sins and warned them that to continue in them would keep them out of God’s kingdom?

It had to have been when he had initially gone through Galatia — specifically the cities of Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, all of which are found in the region of Galatia — during his first missionary journey (Acts 13:14-14:24).  A study of this section of Acts shows quite clearly that he had spent his time in those places preaching the gospel (cf. Acts 13:49; 14:1, 3, 7; etc.)

What is a major part of the gospel message?  Repentance of sins (Lk. 24:47; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 17:30-31; 20:21; 26:20).

It’s worth noting that Paul didn’t just tell those whom he was trying to convert to Christianity that they needed to repent, or even, speaking in a general way, that they needed to repent of sins.

No, he got quite specific.  He told them exactly what sins are.

He did this with Corinth too:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.  (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

He obviously was telling the Christians at Corinth about these sins in this letter, of course.  Yet it is clear that he had also told them to repent of these sins at some point in the past.  Such is the clear import of “And such were some of you.”  The Corinthian Christians had repented of these sins.  When?  When they were “washed…sanctified…(and) justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”  In other words, when they obeyed the gospel through faith and baptism, the gospel which Paul had preached to them when he had traveled to Corinth and lived there for a time (Acts 18:1-8).

In order for the Corinthian Christians to have repented of these sins, Paul would have had to have taught them about these sins and the negative import they would have on their eternal salvation (“the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.”)  He didn’t just say, “Repent.”  He explained exactly what that meant.

Christians, when we share the gospel with lost souls and teach them repentance, we must make sure that we do more than simply tell them to repent and assume that they know exactly what that means and what they must repent of.  We must explain to them that repentance literally means to change their minds.  We must explain to them that sin is biblically defined as breaking the laws of God (1 John 3:4), and that they must repent — change their minds — about doing that.

And just as Paul preached to a pagan culture who was not familiar with the God of the Bible (Acts 17) and thus knew they would not know automatically that certain actions were in fact sinful and they needed to repent of them, we also must realize in the post-Christian culture of America in which we live that people do not automatically know what sin is.  We must therefore take a page out of Paul’s book and get specific in teaching them.

This does not mean that we must teach them “the whole Bible” before baptizing them.  On the contrary, “repentance from dead works” is listed among “the elementary doctrine of Christ” (Heb. 6:1ff).

Since repentance is therefore considered a foundational principle of Christianity right alongside of faith and baptism, we should make sure when we are sharing the gospel with others that we help them have a better understanding of this extremely important command from their Lord.